"DEFINITION OF ACCELERATION" One top fuel dragster 500 cubic inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first 5 rows of stock cars at the Daytona 500. (approx - 8000 hp) Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes 1-1/2 gallons of nitro methane per second; a fully loaded 747 consumes jet fuel at the same rate with 25% less energy being produced. A Dodge Hemi V8 street engine cannot produce enough power to drive the dragster's supercharger. With 3,000 CFM of air being rammed in by the supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into a near-solid form before ignition. Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock at full throttle. At the stoichiometric (stoichiometry: methodology and technology by which quantities of reactants and products in chemical reactions are determined) 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture of nitro methane, the flame front temperature measures 7,050 deg F. (approx - 14.7:1+ on a car) Nitro methane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame seen above the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from atmospheric water vapor by the searing exhaust gases. Dual magnetos supply 44 amps to each spark plug. This is essentially the output of an arc welder in each cylinder. Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during a pass. After halfway, the engine is dieseling from compression, plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1,400 deg F. The engine can only be shut down by cutting the fuel flow. If spark momentarily fails early in the run, unburned nitro builds up in the affected cylinders and then explodes with sufficient force to blow cylinder heads off the block in pieces or split the block in half. In order to exceed 300 mph in 4.5 seconds, dragsters must accelerate an average of over 4G's. In order to reach 200 mph (well before half-track), the launch acceleration approaches 8G's. Dragsters reach over 300 miles per hour before you have completed reading this sentence. Top fuel engines turn approximately 540 revolutions from light to light! Including the burnout, the engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load. The redline is actually quite high at 9,500 rpm. Assuming all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, and for once NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs an estimate $1,000.00 per second. Most top fuel crews include 6 team members and a crew chief and today few of the top teams have anyone working for free. If you run 4 passes to qualify and 4 passes on Sunday that is about $64k plus crew, driver and breakage and there is plenty of that in Top fuel. No wonder they need Big sponsor bucks. The current top fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.441 seconds for the quarter mile (10/05/03, Tony Schumacher). The top speed record is 333.00 mph (533 km/h) as measured over the last 66' of the run (09/28/03 Doug Kalitta). You are driving the average $140,000 Lingenfelter "twin-turbo" powered Corvette Z06. Over a mile up the road, a top fuel dragster is staged and ready to launch down a quarter mile strip as you pass. You have the advantage of a flying start. You run the Vette hard up through the gears and blast across the starting line and pass the dragster at an honest 200 mph. The "tree" goes green for both of you at that exact split second moment. The dragster launches and starts after you. You keep your foot down hard, but you hear an incredibly brutal whine that sears your eardrums and within 3 seconds, the dragster catches and passes you. He beats you to the finish line, a quarter mile away from where you just passed him by a significant margin. Think about it; from a standing start, the dragster had spotted you 200 mph and not only caught you, but nearly blasted you off the road when he passed you all within a mere 1,320 foot long race course. Sick.... That folks is acceleration... nice write up by 82NoMe on http://www.iwsti.com/forums/off-topic/107266-definition-acceleration.html
You make it seem so simple. Read. Srsly. Its well worth it. I've heard that stuff before, but its still amazing every time.
lol. i skimmed over it. i read something similar about a year ago i think. anybody find a video demonstration?
Neat, but the last part is wrong. If your vette is going 200 mph through the starting lights and picks up any speed at all through the 1/4 you will beat the dragster through the lights. Even if you can only maintain 200 mph, you will more than likely beat the dragster as at that speed 1/4 mile only takes 4.5 seconds. If the dragster could keep accelerating (they can't) it would have you for sure by the 5/16 mile mark though.
Lawl. It is that simple All the blah blah blah about stoich mixtures and magnetos is completely irrelevant in light of our little friend F=ma. In other words, even if you have 10,000 hp => a = F/m with F being the force of friction. On 13" steelies with hakkas, a dragster would be dead in the water. I think the real story is how impressively sticky drag radials are. But I digress, it's a pretty basic proposition. @ 200mph, the vette does the quarter mile in (.25 mi)/(200 mi/hr) x 60sec/hr = .075 sec. Sure, by the time the dragster gets to the line, it's going 300 mph, but it doesn't get there until 4.441 - .075 = 4.366 seconds AFTER the vette flew through. Long story short (pun intented), the author clearly has a strong understanding of drag cars and what it takes to build them. Physics? Not so much.
ummmm.....there's a couple more than 60 seconds in an hour . you need to multiply another 60 in there, seconds to minutes...than minutes to hours. the vette at a constant 200mph would do the 1/4mile in 4.5 secs like speedyham said. if it's accellerating, and averaging 205mph, it would do it in 4.39 seconds. it'd be a damn good race!
oh snaps! 3600! I thought something was missing! Bad bummpy! I guess I'm the one who sucks at teh fysics Edit: ==== At least I showed my work and didn't just drop a number in there that made no sense... do I get partial credit for that?
yeah, that whole article is an oldie, but good. Those top fuel cars are insane. I used to watch them on tv and was like eh. But over the summer I went to the lucas oil nationals at brainerd and saw them :eek3:. They're like an act of god. Your eyes blur, you can't hear ****, and you can feel them flying bye. I was in the VIP tent of the Bernstien's and Kenny was saying that because the G forces are so high, the driver is literally driving blind for about 1 second after launch.... that's a quarter of the race.
A few of those stats are BS, but its still a fun read. The acceleration is actually the greatest in the middle of the run after the downforce has increased the available traction and before air resistance has really taken over. The amount of power the supercharger consumes is pretty awesome. Its like 800 bhp or something like that. The key to a fast run is guessing how much traction you're going to have and setting up the clutches right to put just the right amount of power down without spinning the tires too much. The space shuttle has to throttle back its engines to keep the acceleration around 3 G's and does this for about ten minutes straight. The whole vehicle weighs at liftoff weighs around 2200 times what a Top Fuel car does.
